“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.” ― Karl Marx,  Theses on Feuerbach

The Saudi Arabian ship, Bahri Yanbu, is heading toward Sheerness docks, after abandoning plans to dock at Antwerp where protesters, calling themselves “citizen weapons inspectors”, set up a checkpoint to halt any flow of arms. Bahri, the state-owned shipping company that owns the Yanbu, confirmed to Belgian media that military equipment was onboard.



Campaigners have now called on the British authorities to refuse permission for a vast Saudi ship carrying military equipment to dock in the UK because the Gulf kingdom is still embroiled in the war in Yemen.

Virtually no one in the world doubts that today’s times have become desperate. Extreme weather events don’t just cost money; climate change costs lives across the globe and causes species extinction. The climate crisis is radicalising a whole section of the population but mostly many young people who are coming to conclusions that the system can’t stop global warming. Yet they look to governments and the free market for a solution which our rulers might accept, and hope the mighty and the powerful will listen to reason despite all the evidence of their indifference. Capitalism has simply proven incapable of stopping or limiting climate change. Capitalism craves profits is driven by ’short termism’ in its hunger for profits. Stock-market investment decisions are made on the basis on what will bring a return in the quickest time. Capitalist corporations, in order to survive competition, resist having a long-range outlook for their return on investment. So do the stockholders, or they will put their money into other corporations that do bring in quick returns. The corporations must make back their initial investment in plant and equipment quickly, so that their future profits become pure gravy. Concern for the environment, on the other hand, is a long term process that requires giving up the concept of profit in favour of satisfying human needs. Capitalism does not operate to satisfy human needs.  Capitalism creates wants instead of satisfying needs.



Competition to create new markets calls for a continual new products that have little to no use-value to the consumer. Just how many different products do we actually desire? Up to the time of any new product’s introduction we have always gotten along fine without it. But through massive and inescapable advertising, we are addicted to cosmetics, new fashions in clothes, or giant SUVs. Profit maximisation is the goal. This constant introduction of useless or harmful consumer goods produces increased useless consumption of resources and increased harmful dumping of waste, with accelerating destruction of the environment at both ends of the process – natural resource inputs and waste product outputs.  



Such a system cannot plan rational decisions about what to produce that is separate from the bottom line of profits. The capitalist class are incapable of seriously addressing the problem with their pitifully ineffective gestures at addressing global warming.



“What cared the Spanish planters in Cuba, who burned down forests on the slopes of the mountains and obtained from the ashes sufficient fertiliser for one generation of very highly profitable coffee trees – what cared they that the heavy tropical rainfall afterwards washed away the unprotected upper stratum of the soil, leaving behind only bare rock” (Engels, The Part played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man)



Often accepting the argument that capitalism is the cause of climate change many climate activists, nevertheless, reject common ownership and the democratic running of production and distribution as the way forward. The Socialist Party is told that the situation is critical and there is no time to wait for the far-off revolution to come. Now is the time for ‘effective’ campaigning for “effective” reforms would will force governments to act with legislation and regulation and produce speedier results than any struggle to overthrow capitalism would.



 Members of the Socialist Party answer is that whether capitalism has the solutions to the climate crisis is not the question. Instead it is very obviously failing so do so. Of course advocating socialism will not be all that is required but it is the primary demand. Seeking to change the lifestyle of consumerism and high energy use misses the point. It is not about consuming less for most of the planets inhabitants or even for most of the population in the west. It is about stopping capitalism from consuming the planet and ending the inequalities at its heart. The Socialist Party strategy is about building a movement that  identifies capitalism as the cause of both climate change and all the misery and inequalities around the world. Our challenge in the Socialist Party is to win over environment activists to the struggle for revolutionary change to ensure the survival of civilisation in what may be greatest threat humanity has ever faced.



Only socialism can create a sustainable world. Only a system in which use-value, rather than exchange-value, is the basis of society can even contemplate reversing climate change. Only system people collectively control their shared needs, rather than a system that serves small privileged class for its own individual profit can, in fact, act in this way.



One idea subscribed to by many sincere campaigners, but also pushed deliberately by certain institutions, is that overpopulation in the world is the main cause of both global warming and resource depletion. Many claim that the Earth’s carrying capacity has been exceeded by too many people. In today’s world the problem is not too many people, but rather capitalism’s enforced poverty. The World’s population could be reduced by half or more and there would still be unemployment, poverty, disease, and all the other horrors of capitalism. Indeed when the world’s population was half its present size these scourges were just as prevalent. There is no solution to resource depletion and global warming – nor to poverty, racism, exploitation, and war – outside of world socialism.



Socialism is the only form of organisation in which the world’s people will be capable of solving all these problems and restoring a sustainable relationship between humanity and the rest of nature. Competitive forms of social organisation, such as capitalism, are not capable of taking any actions along these lines, other than token ones because of its inherent necessity of expansion. As long as capitalism exists, with its expansionist tendencies, we will be incapable of solving the problems of humanity’s interaction with nature, in which nature is used up in the drive for profits and the waste products choke and starve us. Only socialism will permit us to halt our accelerating advance toward the cliff-edge. The hazards of continuing capitalist exploitation of the working class are now clear. In order to save ourselves, working people must remove this obstacle to cooperative action. When we are able to rationally plan the production only of things we really need –coordinated and cooperative planning by a socialist society, without the interference of the profit motive, will permit us to act according to our needs.

“For our part, we must expose the old world to the full light of day and shape the new one in a positive way. The longer the time that events allow to thinking humanity for taking stock of its position, and to suffering mankind for mobilising its forces, the more perfect on entering the world will be the product that the present time bears in its womb.” – Marx



Gloom and despair have gripped millions around the world. We live under dark clouds, is there anyone in the socialist movement to whom this thought has not occurred? Many of our fellow-workers see no way out and no–where to go.



Although we in the Socialist Party have full confidence in the certainty of the great change coming about, it would be foolish for any one of us to attempt to speculate as to the date of the realisation of our goal. Over-expectation is apt to give birth to despair if it meets with disappointment. It nevertheless remains our task to continue our urging of our fellow-workers to press their due claim to that fullness and completeness of life. The demands of non-socialists go little beyond the demand for a bigger ration and better lodging for the slave.



Economically the world was ready for socialism decades ago. But politically the people are not yet ready for socialism. They do not yet understand why capitalism is not capable of feeding, clothing, or sheltering them. They are capable of seeing only their immediate ills, and hence are capable of making only immediate and emergency demands. The burning problem of the day, therefore, for the Socialist Party is to construct the bridge between working people and the socialist revolution. People can see the abundance surrounding them. They can see the fertile fields full of crops. They can see the packed shops and warehouses, the potential of new technology. And they can see just as clearly the empty plates on the dinner tables of many. They can hear children crying for food. They know of the slums and shanty-towns. They can feel all the horrible misery of the rotten conditions, the shame and degradation in which many are compelled to live under. The first and most important point is that it is useless to depend on the government for protection.  One of the most important lessons a socialist learns is that the state is the executive committee of the ruling class. Another is that the emancipation of the working class must be the work of the working class itself.



The world today is a place of stark and bewildering contradictions. With the greatest industrial and agricultural power history has ever before seen, we cannot feed, clothe and provide a decent livelihood for billions. As people sweat and toil away to survive, billionaires squander fortunes and fly around the world in private jets. Poverty and economic insecurity exist alongside extravagance. The ruling class is capable of extinguishing life on the planet with nuclear war and is on the verge of environmental self-destruction with climate change. Our society is based upon violence, despair and degradation, and people’s life’s aim has become one of narrow self-gratification. The capitalist system of exploitation, violence, racism and war strangles our lives. Real life, in contrast, cries out for work for the welfare of humanity. What is the reason for these contradictions between the promises, the potential of this society, and its reality? Why is there such an agonising gap between what is and what could be! 



The rich have one basic goal in life: to make more and more profits, and they accomplish this by controlling the economics, politics, and cultural life. The capitalists will throw workers out into the streets to starve, promote racism, and build a military arsenal that can destroy the world several times over – anything for profits! This is an irrational and unjust system. But life does not have to be this way.



We can improve our lives and society, and we can eliminate exploitation and capitalist injustice, by overturning the capitalist system. We can replace capitalism with a rational and humane system – socialism. Socialism is a social system where social wealth is genuinely controlled by society and for the benefit of society; where the common good, not profits. Such an economic and political transformation will be radical, but a radical solution is what it will take to bury the miseries of capitalism. The socialist revolution has become a historical necessity and possibility. There is no other choice today but for the working people to organise to struggle and, one day, win socialism. Socialism will qualitatively improve the lives of the working people. Women and men, young and old, and people of all lands are realising we must unite and struggle to survive, to be able to work, eat and live as decent human beings. If the working people, and not the corporations, controlled the great resources of our society, we could improve all our lives. We could guarantee a decent standard of living for all. We could end pollution and global warming.



These are the promises that encourage us forward. These are the hopes and dreams of socialism. The Socialist Party is dedicated to realising that day when the exploiters, racists and warmongers will be thrown from power forever, and a new life for the people of the world can begin.

“At least seven million lives could be saved over the next decade by identifying the most appropriate science for each country situation, by basing strong cancer responses on universal health coverage, and by mobilising different stakeholders to work together,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO, was quoted as saying.



https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/treatment-afghans-struggle-cope-cancer-200204081013954.html

Adam Tinson, a senior analyst at the Health Foundation, said: “Low-quality work is where someone feels stressed and unfulfilled, whether that’s due to pay, insecurity, a lack of autonomy or a feeling of dissatisfaction. This can harm people’s health.”

The Socialist Party proposes that all resources, all land and buildings, all factories, mines, all the means of transportation and communication, should be, not private property, but the common property of all. We propose that production be made to serve the needs of society, rather than to serve the needs of a few parasites. Planned production for use on the basis of common ownership without any class division is called socialism. Experience has proved that planning under capitalism is impossible. When socialists talk of a society organised on the basis of planned production and distribution we have in mind is very simple. Do away with production for profit.



With our amassed knowledge and information, we can assess all the resources, plant and manpower that is available, calculate how many products each sector of industry can produce, determine the consumption of the population to ensure that nobody will go hungry or without a home. Is this impossible?



We can make use of the best brains of scientists to improve our technology and our methods of work, encourage research for the purpose of improving life, not just merely in industry and agriculture but for all areas of life. Manufacturing output can increase to permit the distribution of the fruits of increased production among all the members of society for the improvement of their well–being, always heightening the technology of production to enrich the economic and cultural life of all the members of society and to ease their toil. Continue this process indefinitely. When you do so there will be no crises, no unemployment, no exploitation, no wars, no fear of the future. Is this impossible?



That would be only a beginning, for human inventiveness knows no limit and the progress is unending. The application of science to human society shows what immense possibilities for the satisfaction of human wants are contained in the achievements of science and in its future growth. Socialism reduces human labour to the easy task of supervising machinery a few hours a day. It leaves mankind free to engage in higher intellectual pursuits. It makes everybody responsible for the welfare of all. Let everybody work according to  ability; let everybody receive from the common stock of goods according to  needs. There is no exploitation, no oppression, no insecurity, no poverty. Life is made humane. Is this impossible?



Capitalism is based on the principle of private property of certain humans “owning” the earth for the purpose of exploiting it for profit. At an earlier stage, exploiters even believed they could own other humans. Profit consists of taking out more than you put in. According to Marxist theory, profit is extracted from workers’ labour when the capitalists pay them less than the value of what they produce. The portion of the value of the product that the capitalist keeps is called surplus value. The amount of surplus value that the capitalist can keep varies with the level of organisation of the workers, and with their level of privilege within the world labour pool. But the working class can never be paid the full value of their labour under capitalism, because the capitalist class exists by extracting surplus value from their labour.



The working class must fight against all attacks on the working class including the attacks on the welfare state which previous generations struggled hard to win. In addition, the necessity of moving beyond this system and to socialism must not be forgotten. Reforms won by workers under this system can always be taken away and that a revolutionary overthrow by the working class is the only solution to crisis and oppression. This system cannot be stopped by force. It is violent and ruthless beyond the capacity of any people’s resistance movement.

https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2020/02/03/exxons-exploitative-oil-deal-guyana-will-deprive-country-us55-billion

The USA has the world’s 10th highest per capita income at $62,795 and an unrivalled gross domestic product (GDP) of $21.3 trillion. 



Despite that, in 2020, an estimated 11.9 million American kids — 16.2% of the total — live below the official poverty line, which is a paltry $25,701 for a family of four with two kids.



 Put another way, according to the Children’s Defense Fund, kids now constitute one-third of the 38.1 million Americans classified as poor and 70% of them have at least one working parent.



Yes, the proportion of kids living below the poverty line has zigzagged down from 22% when the country was being ravaged by the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and was even higher in prior decades, but no one should crack open the champagne bottles just yet. 



The relevant standard ought to be how the United States compares to other wealthy countries. The answer: badly. It has the 11th highest child poverty rate of the 42 industrialized countries tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Winnow that list down to European Union states and Canada, omitting low and middle-income countries, and our child poverty rate ranks above only Spain’s. 



Use the poverty threshold of the OECD — 50% of a country’s median income ($63,178 for the United States) — and the American child poverty rate leaps to 20%.



Washington allocates only 9% of its federal budget to children, poor or not. That compares to a third for Americans over 65, up from 22% in 1971. If you want a single fact that sums up where we are now, inflation-adjusted per-capita spending on kids living in the poorest families has barely budged compared to 30 years ago whereas the corresponding figure for the elderly has doubled.



Defining poverty may sound straightforward, but it’s not. The government’s annual Official Poverty Measure (OPM), developed in the 1960s, establishes poverty lines by taking into account family size, multiplying the 1963 cost for a minimum food budget by three while factoring in changes in the Consumer Price Index, and comparing the result to family income. In 2018, a family with a single adult and one child was considered poor with an income below $17,308 ($20,2012 for two adults and one child, $25,465 for two adults and two children, and so on). According to the OPM, 11.8% of all Americans were poor that year.



By contrast, the Supplementary Poverty Measure (SPM), published yearly since 2011, builds on the OPM but provides a more nuanced calculus. It counts the post-tax income of families, but also cash flows from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the Child Tax Credit (CTC), both of which help low-income households. It adds in government-provided assistance through, say, the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF), the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), Medicaid, subsidies for housing and utilities, and unemployment and disability insurance. However, it deducts costs like child care, child-support payments, and out-of-pocket medical expenses. According to the SPM, the 2018 national poverty rate was 12.8%.



Of course, neither of these poverty calculations can tell us how children are actually faring. Put simply, they’re faring worse. In 2018, 16.2% of Americans under 18 lived in families with incomes below the SPM line. And that’s not the worst of it. A 2019 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study commissioned by Congress found that 9% of poor children belong to families in “deep poverty” (incomes that are less than 50% of the SPM). But 36% of all American children live in poor or “near poor” families, those with incomes within 150% of the poverty line.



Child poverty also varies by race — a lot. The rate for black children is 17.8%; for Hispanic kids, 21.7%; for their white counterparts, 7.9%. Worse, more than half of all black and Hispanic kids live in “near poor” families compared to less than a quarter of white children. Combine age and race and you’ll see another difference, especially for children under five, a population with an overall 2017 poverty rate of 19.2%.  Break those under-fives down by race, however, and here’s what you find: white kids at 15.9%, Hispanic kids at an eye-opening 25.8%, and their black peers at a staggering 32.9%.



The child poverty rate shifts by state and the differences are stark. North Dakota and Utah are at 9%, for instance, while New Mexico and Mississippi are at 27% and 28%. Nineteen states have rates of 20% or more. Check out a color-coded map of geographic variations in child poverty and you’ll see that rates in the South, Southwest, and parts of the Midwest are above the national average, while rural areas tend to have higher proportions of poor families than cities. According to the Department of Agriculture, in rural America, 22% of all children and 26% of those under five were poor in 2017.

The Social Progress Index places the United States 75th out of 149 countries in “access to quality education” and 70th in “access to quality health care” and poor kids are, of course, at a particular disadvantage.

The supposed goal: to cut costs by reducing dependence on government. (Never mind the subsidies and tax loopholes Trump’s crew has created for corporations and the super wealthy, which add up to many billions of dollars in spending and lost revenue.) These supposedly work-ethic-driven austerity policies batter working families with young kids that, for example, desperately need childcare, which can take a big bite out of paychecks: 10% or more for all households with kids, but half in the case of poor families.  Add to that the cost of unsubsidized housing. Median monthly rent increased by nearly a third between 2001 and 2015. Put another way, rents consume more than half the income of the bottom 20% of Americans, according to the Federal Reserve. The advent of Trump has also made the struggle of low-income families with healthcare bills even harder. The number of kids without health insurance jumped by 425,000 between 2017 and 2018 when, according to the Census Bureau, 4.3 million children lacked coverage.



Even before Donald Trump’s election, only one-sixth of eligible families with kids received assistance for childcare and a paltry one-fifth got housing subsidies. Yet his administration arrived prepared to put programs that helped some of them pay for housing and childcare on the chopping block. 



https://countercurrents.org/2020/02/the-shame-of-child-poverty-in-the-age-of-trump